Sunday, November 27, 2011

Chronicle Books is an independant book publisher of distinctive books. What are distinctive books? Books that make you want to sit down in the middle of the day, pour yourself a glass of wine, cuddle up with a quilt, and browse. Books with gorgous pictures of architecture, crafts, cooking, and art. Books that make you pause and daydream no matter where you are: reading on the bus, on your lunch break at work, or fighting valiantly to keep your eyes open for another hour before drifting off to sleep.

Right now, Chronicle Books is giving away $1500 worth of books. This is such an amazing offer! That's $500 worth of books for me, $500 worth of books for you, and $500 worth of books for my charity: Ione Library.

(Yup, that's it, the last door on the street)

Ione is my hometown. I used to spend hours in our one-room library, reading every book on the shelf. The librarian used to send me birthday and graduation cards. Ahh...the memories :)

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Do you follow SewCalGal? If you don't, RUN over there right now to see what she's doing! SewCalGal is always up to some quilty fun. She scours the web to share with us new books, classes, techniques, and notions. She is the brainchild behind such fun events as Pets on Quilts Quiltshow, Golden Quilter Awards, Quilter's with Tools database, and many more.

There are two major events coming up that SewCalGal is kindly coordinating.

I am super excited to be playing in the FMQ Challenge. Take the pledge, post the button on your blog, and wait until the first project is posted. I am determined to become an award-winning quilter one day! Thanks SewCalGal, for all the help you've given me to get closer to my dream :)

The second fun event is the Christmas Quilt Show! Yikes! I need to put my sewing machine pedal to the metal to get it finished to post in the show! Talk about Motivation!! As usual, SewCalGal has gotten a ton of sponsors for this show and there will be prizes. The show opens Monday, November 28.

I don't know about you, but I LOVE Christmas quilts and can't wait to check out the eye candy! Yum!

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Did you have a fabulous FNSI? I did! A little bit of wine, some fast food for dinner (Chipotle), and some quality spending time with my sewing machine :)

I have been quilting my Xmas Sampler. No real plan, I just pick a color thread and do whatever I feel like doing. BTW, if some of those rows look crooked and wonky, it's NOT my camera. They actually ARE crooked and wonky and I'm not apologizing. It happens.

My first meander. I'm pretty impressed. It's a bit choppy, so next time I'll work more on smoothing it out. Overall, great try :)

I love how this wreath turned out. I traced a pointsetta in the negative space corners and just did some flowing curves in the center. I outlined the applique with matching thread.

I'm getting better!

Here's just a photo to showcase how much better I am at backtracking. You can't really tell that I had to backtrack on these curves. Amazing how easy it is to improve FMQ skills, if you actually practice :)

Friday, November 18, 2011

I've just recently discovered the world of Swag Bucks. It's so easy. Just install the Swag Bucks toolbar on your computer (it takes a few seconds, that's it), and start using it to search the internet for things you already search for. My SwagBucks search box sits right under my Google search box. I didn't have to change anything else.

Every day that I use my internet, I earn Swag Bucks. You can trade your Swag Bucks in for different items. The one I have my eye on is an Amazon Gift Card. They have all kinds of different prizes.

There are other ways to earn Swag Bucks, you can plan games, answer polls, or even complete offers. I usually answer the Daily Poll and earn the rest just by searching for things I'm already searching for! It's basically Free Money!

If you would like to sign up for Swag Bucks, you can use this code and I can earn a small percentage of what you earn through searching. Or you can go straight to Swag Bucks and sign up without a promoter.

This has been a super busy week for me. For my husband’s birthday we spent a few days out of town. It was so nice to get away! Unfortunately, that means no quilting. Then I came back home to a big test in school and loads of homework to cram in before its due date. The homework is submitted and the test taken last night, thankfully! No worrying now, either I did good or bad, but at least I’m done studying!

Since my announcement of having to go gluten free, I’ve been going through some health issues too. Off-gluten, then back on, biopsy, blood draws, extreme fatigue, mood swings…the list goes on! Now most of the invasive procedures are done. I’ve officially been diagnosed with celiac disease, and have been off-gluten for a week now. It’s been a roller coaster and my poor body doesn’t know which way is up! These next few weeks I’m looking forward to healing my body, getting to know myself better, and enjoying my release from the grip of fatigue. I’ll be a whole, happy me!

I’ve been quilting on my Xmas Sampler quilt. I’m really pushing to get that done by December 1. No pictures to show (I’m writing this at work (on my break, I swear!)). But I should be finished soon. I'll be working on it tonight during FNSI! Sign up here if you would like to join me!

Here’s a finished flimsy! I did something a bit different with the borders. Do you like them? I do. This flimsy will marinate for a month or two before I get to it. My husband loves it, so I'll do something special for the quilting.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

This weekend was the Pioneer Quilter's Guild Quilt Show. It was so much fun to see the local talent here in Roseville! There are some very talented quilters in my area that I can't wait to get to know better :)

I was checking out the vendor's booths when I noticed something: every product there was by Kay Mckenzie. Then I looked at the vendor's nametag and was surprised to see Kay!

I was super excited to meet a fellow blogger and applique expert! Do you have Kay's newest book?

Kay does some amazing applique. I absolutely love applique quilts! I just need to improve my skills. To help with that, I picked up a few of Kay's patterns:

I can't wait for Kay's newest book to come out in April!

I belong to the Martingale Book Club, so you know I'll be getting that book as soon as it comes out :)

Friday, November 4, 2011

Thank you for all your advice on Borders last week! The general consensus was that the red border looked just fine. There were some other good ideas, including adding a thin green border. But I think I agree with Vivian, who pointed out the border looked too thick. I decided a scallop border would make it thinnner and set the quilt off nicely. That adds some pizazz and class to the border too!

I finished adding the red border and will draw the scallops after it's quilted. I haven't decided on a quilting design for the borders yet :)

I've been a busy bee this week! I basted three quilts. One is a quilt I promised to quilt for the local Guild. I ghetto-basted them. That means I did it on my living room floor. On a big piece of cardboard. In large sections. All the while dreaming of a large tile or wood floor. Ahh...the dreams of a poor quilter *snicker*

I also started quilting! My quilting plan is: No Plan! I am quilting by the seat of my pants and trying not to overthink it. It's going to be organic and flowy and I want to use a few different threads. Whatever strikes my fancy! I hope this will cure me of my compulsive use of quilting templates and make me trust my own quilting skills.

I like it so far! I used green thread for the top. I chose blue for the back because it matches the backing fabric (an old, I mean, vintage sheet) and because I picked up a huge cone at a quilting rummage sale. Gotta use it somewhere :)

I'm linking with up other UFO Busters at Susan's blog. Come check out what we've been doing!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

I recieved a prize pack from Cathy from Big Lake Quilter last night. Look at the fun toys! I got the book Machine Quilting Made Easy, a Redwork pillow pattern, some red and white fabric, red embroidery thread, and embroidery needles. Thanks Cathy! I already read the book last night while eating dinner. I can't wait to try some of the exercises :)

Go check out Cathy's blog, but be careful! You will get sucked into looking at her beautiful quilts and the gorgeous landscape pictures she takes! Oh, and check out that awesome Halloween quilt she made from orphan blocks. Totally cool!